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Thursday, January 9, 2014

Le Batard Outrage Proves Again How Media Perceives Fans

Yesterday's Hall Of Fame announcement came with the usual controversy and debates over who was and wasn't elected, and who did and did not receive votes. However, the biggest storyline that developed after the announcement, in my opinion, was Dan Le Batard's decision to turn his ballot over to Deadspin.

Like most people, I shook my head in disapproval when I first heard that a writer had given Deadspin control over his ballot. I was convinced that the site would make a mockery of the entire thing. (Mind you, I did not know that their readers would be voting; I thought the Deadspin staff would be concocting some kind of publicity stunt.) Then, when I heard that the writer was Le Batard, I was shocked. I don't know much about him but, he has never struck me as someone who would grandstand like that.

Fast forward to this morning. I was watching Mike & Mike on ESPN when Mike Greenberg read the ballot that Deadspin submitted:

He then explained that it was the Deadspin readers who came up with this ballot.

And that's the key here.

Unlike myself, the media knew that the readers would be the ones voting. With this knowledge they jumped to terrible conclusions, assuming that fans would vote for people like Jacque Jones, JT Snow and Armando Benitez. Well, people did vote for these guys but, it wasn't the fans.
This outrage proves once again how the media perceives fans. They perceive us as uninformed, emotional beings who have no interest in getting it right. That couldn't be further from the truth, of course. A look at the All Star balloting of the past few years proves it, as does the fine work done by hundreds of baseball bloggers around the internet.

Personally, I would not have voted for Barry Bonds, but I understand why people did. The Hall Of Fame needs to come up with a PED policy, and it needs to make some other changes as well, because the system is broken. Let's hope it will be fixed by this time next year.

3 comments:

Maybe it really is time to put them in a corner. The PED users, and Shoeless Joe and Charlie Hustle. And have their plaques say words to the effect of, "We couldn't ignore their achievements, but they did something wrong, and we can't put them with Jackie, Willie, Ted and the Babe, so here they are. Judge them for yourself."